Ma Wa Gray

I'm sitting on my couch between two jack russels. Somewhere on the other side of the house Stephen is bathing the children. We've started packing bags for our big holiday.  Eva's art litters the floor and Gray's ghastly crocs are poking out from under the couch.  Gray arrives on the scene, fresh from his bath, refusing to put a tshirt on. Stephen follows him. Gray just read the sentence about his crocs and is offended. Stephen suggests 'betrayed' as an apt description. Then he monologues about Gray's love for long socks. Gray agrees, with his arms slung over Stephen's shoulder.  There's another long conversation about socks. Stephen calls Gray a half wit.  Gray wrestles Stephen, inciting the dogs who then jump onto my stomach to get to the action. Eva shouts for Stephen from the bath and they all disappear again leaving me alone. The dogs settle back in their vigil on either side of me. One takes moments of domesticity for granted. The normal everyda...

Yesterday after my previously mentioned weeding experience in the garden I took the kids to the Kearsney swimming pool for a swim. My doctor has told me that the only way to get rid of my frozen shoulder is to swim. Since he told me this at least two months ago I've been to the pool for the sum total of one session. This was to be my second. I stripped down to my costume, popped in my ear plugs to protect my rapidly failing ears and professionally slipped my cap on. Whenever I do this I am reminded of the days when I was a lithe high school swimmer who used to swim galas in this very pool. I was long, sleek and very fit. Gray is now the swimmer in the family and he he too is long, sleek and very fit.  Now, the Kearsney pool borders on our Sports Zone and a span of windows run the length of the pool as a result. They also double up unofficially as mirrors. I have witnessed many a school boy flex in front of these window/mirrors. Unfortunately as I strode towards the edge if the pool...

  My family and I like to watch a TV programme called 'Homestead Rescue' where the hard core Rainey family (homesteaders from Alaska) rescue homesteads. I'm sure you could have probably worked that out by yourself.  Having watched a fair number of episodes it looks like that if you want to qualify to be in the show your homestead needs to look like a low key squatter camp. A number of your rooves must be plastic. You must have a critter problem. Your vegetable garden must be a couple of old poles stuck into the ground with one dying cabbage in the middle. And you must be in constant war against mother nature - floods, fires, drought, possibly some inbreeding somewhere in your past.  I'm generalizing here but most of the homesteaders look like they need a good bath and a solid meal. Their kids are mainly feral but charming and a lot of them have given up careers as musicians, lawyers and postmen to live the way of their ancestors. It hasn't worked and their generator...

I've only ever watched 'City of Angels' once, but, like Braveheart, I would still say it's one of my favourite films. I will never look at pears in the same way again, and neither will I listen to 'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls in the same way. Meg Ryan needs to take her bicycle safety more seriously. That movie ripped my heart apart, and the song still does.  'Iris' is in fact my favourite song. It's also the song I promised one of my best friends from high school that I would sing at her funeral. We were 17 at the time. I wonder if her funeral plans are still the same because those high notes aren't actually in my range. When I made the promise we were invincible, I feel less invincible now. Floey please don't shuffle.  This evening rather a lot of middle aged Durban people, who are no longer invincible, are sitting having unexpected date nights because our long anticipated Goo Goo Dolls concert has been rained out.  It's pretty bleak. The pla...

There are two sleeping bunnies in my bed.  They are soft and furry and mine. Outside the rain drips against the window pain And a fluff tail sings it's sad sing in the mist.  My bunnies sigh deeply in their sleep, Two auburn haired things cuddled together. I still can't believe they are mine.

Hey Hugh remember when Maryna handed you a calculator and you happily thought it was a remote control and you surfed the channels while she smugly watched her programme? And do you remember when you told an awkward eleven year old aspiring dramatist that her performance of the now socially very unacceptable, 'My boomerang won't come back',  was the funniest thing you've ever seen? Do you know that she's now 41 and still goes to that moment when she needs a lift.  Do you remember when you and Ross spent an entire day fighting the demonic runaway fires on our farm? I remember standing with you guys in the yard of my grandfather's home after we had removed burning floor boards from his dining room. The wind was still howling and we were all covered in soot. You and Ross could no longer see anything and no longer had eye lashes or eyebrows. Your eyes were blood shot and your bodies were totally stuffed. But you helped to save our farm that day when the community was...

  This morning Stephen and I attended Eva's first morning chapel service that Grade R parents were allowed to attend.  Maybe it's fatigue, or recognition of the tight coil of anxiety in my gut after a very hectic term, but I battled to hold back the tears in that beautiful, spirit filled space.  This happens whenever I'm in the presence of God. I can't help it. When I become aware of His presence I am just completely overwhelmed. And it spills out from my eyes. And when I've tried to do everything on my own steam for too long then the tears flow even harder because He was actually there all along.  I suppose it's what some people now call 'plugged in'. I like the metaphor. To be plugged in is to have a surge of energy from an infinite source. It's being able to operate the way something was designed to operate. It's when something works at full capacity.  It's the difference between light and dark.  And this all happened even before the actua...